An eventful night

I’ve been up since about 3am this morning. Writing this just after 5am, and I’m feeling tired. A four wheel drive vehicle, filled with unknown people, parked in our front drive three times, waking me up each time.

The first time was at about 2:40am or thereabouts. They parked, argued and wandered around the yard for a good five minutes or so, then got back in the car and drove off. I wouldn’t let M go out and ask them what they were doing in our yard. I just think confronting four unknown young men in the middle of the night is a bad idea. We were quite awake by this stage, but went back to bed, dismissing it all as a bit of a strange incident.

Then, about half an hour later, just as I was about to fall asleep, they came back. I didn’t like this – especially the fact that this was disturbing my beauty sleep – so I called the police. The interesting, complicating factor here is that the power went off at almost the exact moment that the four wheel drive came back. The 5am radio news reports that there was a power failure affecting some 15,000 homes in the inner northern suburbs (“a fault in a substation in North Perth” apparently), so I guess I won’t take it personally.

The police came quickly, about five minutes after I called. Not one, but two cars with two officers in each. They asked us questions – no we didn’t get the licence plate, the glare of the car lights prevented us seeing any details, they got out of the car and argued, M heard one of the men call the other a “Noongar bastard”, one of them chucked a bottle out on the verge (it’s still there I think) – and shone a torch around and looked up and down the street and in the neighbours’ yards. Told us to call them again if they came back, and were nice about being called out (“It’s your tax dollars at work!”) for apparently nothing.

We went back inside and went back to bed. Then, about half an hour later, they came back… The electricity was still off so M and I skulked around the window trying in vain to see the car’s licence plate. This time it was more nerve wracking because two of the guys got out of the car and went down the side of our house down to the back house (we share a block and there’s a house down the back with their driveway down the side of our house). I called the police again. They actually managed to talk to one of the guys who it now turns out may have been the son of our neighbour…

We still don’t really know if all three incidents involved the same people. Or who the two guys were and what they were doing. The power failure didn’t help as without the street lights everything seemed ominous and menacing. I couldn’t even see the guys’ faces.

I’m tired. I think today’s going to be a long day.

Photo by The Food Pornographer.

Categories: annoyance